Patrice Valota | Days are Dark & Nights are Clear

Hay Hill Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition by French artist, Patrice Valota. Valota presents a unique handling of colour, deriving from the use of wax, his predominant medium. He paints with the flame of a blowtorch, mastering the fusion of melted matter and pigments to obtain a glowing surface. Wax sets off a very particular light, resulting in a delicate, yet strong depth of colour: “It absorbs colours, transcends them and guides me in my search for other hues. Wax is alive, sensual and at the heart of my story”.(Valota)

In Days are Dark & Nights are Clear, the artist plunges us into the origins of colour-combining forces of nature and spiritual grace, by way of instinct and controlled gesture. The show comprises a new series of landscapes which hover on the brink of abstraction. Characterised by seemingly pre-cellular or molecular forms, these scenes simultaneously evoke sunsets, or interstellar clouds. In these works, where light and darkness are both blended and contrasted, colour becomes an experience. For Patrice Valota, painting is what allows him to return to a state of abandon and to reinterpret what he used to see when accompanying his father down the quarries of the family mushroom farm.

About the artist

Valota was born in Compiègne (Northern France) in 1950. His artistic calling began at the age of 15, after seeing reproductions of works by Georges Rouault and Bernard Buffet. Valota took some gouache, tore a bed sheet apart, grabbed a kitchen knife, his father’s pipe and painted his first picture. His father, of Italian descent, was a mushroom farmer. Valota would accompany him as a young boy and was amazed by the white mushrooms that appeared like magic in the dark ancient quarry. The stone walls, lit only by the flame of a torch, revealed naturally sculpted figures and shapes, setting his imagination alight. These same strong images surged back into his memory, some 30 years later during a visit to Jean Cortot’s atelier. Thus, at the age of 38 he finally decided to become a painter and three years later had his first one-man show at the Lavignes Gallery in Paris.

Valota shares his time between his studios in Paris and Normandy. He has exhibited both painting and sculpture in numerous solo shows and group shows. His work is part of many reputable art collections including that of Alain-Dominique Perrin Founder of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art) and John Travolta.

Note

An exhibition of works by Patrice Valota will be held alongside the sculptures of Auguste Rodin.